


Invictus

by orphan_account



Category: World of Warcraft, World of Warcraft (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Death Knights - Freeform, Friendship/Love, Light Angst, M/M, Pain As Pleasure, World of Warcraft - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-14
Updated: 2016-07-14
Packaged: 2018-07-23 21:21:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7480584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After they are freed from servitude to the Lich King, Thassarian and Koltira realize that, while unconquerable by outside forces, they may never be free of one another...and they may never want such freedom. (God, I love this pairing so much). Safe for work and with as "happy-for-now" of an ending as I'd imagine two death knights leading opposing factions can hope to attain. <3 For my dearest Moonfae.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Invictus

**Author's Note:**

  * For [moonfae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonfae/gifts).



**Thassarian**

In life, time is a race always lost. In death, time is nothing.

In service of The Lich King, time is-- _was_ \--an idea strung between being and nothing. Useless as a Death Knight’s heart, which remembers how to beat only because of what it _was_ \--the memory of flesh, and nothing more.

In service of The Lich King I was a hungry thing envying both the living and the dead. Freed now of those chains, I am hungry and jealous still. I am strung between being and nothing and if my heart remembers how to beat, it does so because I am free.

And it does so because of _him_...Koltira.

*

I feel his presence as I wait.

It's a shadow against the aching brightness of life that thrives even beneath the tired soil of this season that the living dread.

I feel his aura, as I know he does mine, and it bleeds over my consciousness, a red stain on white cloth. Out of habit, I grip the hilts of my swords tighter. Out of memory, the fingers of my left hand relax. It took only _one_ sword, after all. Deep-driven, an instrument of a will not my own that led me to woo my enemy to our shared damnation.

I recall with unrelenting detail the weight of his body as he slumped against me, blood-slick hands clawing at my chest, rage in his eyes. My muscles remember the first shove, that burst of animal strength guiding my blade then the second, gentler thrust, easing through softer tissue...my tongue remembers the bright, hot tang of his blood--precious ruby cabochons that jeweled my lips before I licked them away--my body remembers his death and I know that he, too, remembers.

_We remember everything._

_*_

I sniff the air around me and against the winter chill I catch his scent--like my own, but laced with the sweetness of dead roses. It quickens some instinct in me that the muddying of time has not dulled.  

He is closer now, and he has stopped.

He waits for me to come to him. This one small thing I will grant him, always. After all, he is of my making--something between enemy and lover, our remembered heartbeats echoing thunder at one another’s approach.

I would know my Koltira _anywhere_.

I can almost see him where he waits--his slender predator’s grace as he stands outside of time and the notice of living things. I can feel the roughspun tangle of his starlit hair in my fingers as I pull his head back, as I did, or as I will. I breathe deeply his moldering roses scent and I taste--tasted then, or now, and for always--the delicious vehemence of his hate and his loyalty.

His hunger is like mine--an open wound that no magics or time can heal. And loosed from the reins of our former master, he will come back to me as I will to him, always.

Koltira will forever be mine and there is nothing in my not-life that I regret more, or that pleases me greater.

 

**Koltira**

Thassarian is near.

Built like a bear, a great stomping thing, a once-human wall of a man. Once upon a time, his people were--are--the enemies of mine. For a once-human lumbering beast, he is still quieter than any that live. I am like a snowcat, he has told me, and I hear him as I know he hears me.

He hesitates.

 _Good_.

I almost forget, mind fogging and frost-heavy, why this pleases me until memory strikes and I am suddenly again in his embrace, his blade deep in my heart as he licks my blood from his dead lips and smiles a lover’s smile.

As he makes me like _him_.

I catch the wintry-spice and unlife smell of him, just yards ahead...north. Yes, that is north and I almost go to him, my blade bared, my lips pulled back in a snarl. I quiet myself. I remember how he defied his nature for me, how he proved his beautiful and maddening aberrance in his rebellion. Unbroken--undefeated. He was the first to turn away from what he had become.

I, of course, followed.

*

He is nearer than before but I will not go to him. No, Thassarian will come to _me_. He has before, and will always do so. He will come to me because he cannot stay away.

I do not know how long I stand in place and my body gives me no complaints of cold or pain beyond the wounds that are simply who I am. I do not really understand time the same as once I did. It is all _now_ , and all _then_. Faltora falls--or fell. I am spared somehow but the Elfgates are breached, what was it, only yesteryear? Thassarian lets me live. He stays his blades, twice, was it only days past?

But I know this is not true. Time has passed and the world is changed. Light’s Hope, when we were freed. When we became...as we now are, Thassarian and me.

*

Closer still.

_What are you waiting for?_

*

I stand unmoving in this ice-shrouded world, soldiers camped so far in the distance even I cannot smell them. Creatures, at least the clever or the small and frightened ones know to keep their distance.

I am alone, but for him.

This pleases me.

I hear him close in before I see him and quicker than thought I am a thrown spear, hurling myself so that he slams against an oak tree the moment he comes into my view. Thassarian lets me pin him, his uncustomarily light leather armor thudding against rough bark.

He makes no move to defend himself.

What falls from my tongue is a hiss, a garbled whisper that might be his name.

He moves in a blur and his fingers, icier than the air, curl around my bare throat. Such large hands, stronger in undeath than life.

“Koltira,” he says so slowly and sonorously that I am reminded of a dirge-bell.

“Thassarian,” I reply thickly against the pressure of his choke-hold then drive my fist into his face in anger I no longer feel and with all the impassioned care of a lover’s touch.

 

**Thassarian**

I taste blood on my teeth. I squeeze my fingers tighter on his throat, his skin softer and finer than mine, even in our ruination.

“Koltira.” I repeat his name like it’s a prayer.

“ _Nnnhh_ ,” he growls in reply, chin upturned.

He writhes sharply to the side and hits me again despite my hand on his throat. I register a savage kick to my shin and I must admire his feral grace as much as I can admire anything--elven poise gone shadow-dark and hungry.

I release my hold and he backs two paces away, still and wary as a cornered nightsaber.

“None around but us for miles, brother,” I say, not moving.

“I know,” he says. Koltira’s lips curl in a knife-sharp smile.

“I am barely bleeding. Do you not plan to ravage me again?” I hold his gaze, my back still to the tree. He looks up at me, head tilting to the side.

“I do not wish to draw the attention of your new masters,” he says, quieter than before. “I will, for now, restrain myself.”

“They are no more my masters than yours are sovereign lords to you, _brother_ ,” I say, this time stepping forward.

He does not back away.

“Hmph.” He gazes at me with the same death-blue eyes that I turn to him, a noncommittal scoff low in his throat.

“Even now we are to be pitted against each other,” I say.

“No,” Koltira’s cold smile deepens. “Never again. Never will anyone else tell me who I must hate.”

I bend my own lips in reply, a grim smile that I know was not welcoming in life but is is the best I can do.

 

**Koltira**

Thassarian’s smile is terrifying in its wolfishness, or would be to one who feels such fears. A stab of some long-buried emotion quickens my mind and senses. I have not often seen his expression change and his exuberance thrills me.

“Why did you come here? Bored of your duties already, Thassarian?”

I let him stand close enough to me that must I crane my neck to see his his face. He reaches for me, fast for one so big, and this time threads an un-gauntleted hand in the hair at the base of my neck.

“You know why,” he says, a hint of a growl in his hollow voice.

I reply by ducking low, my scalp alight with pain, and I swipe a sword from the scabbard on his left hip. Metal sings in the silence, the blade now pressed to his side. He tightens his fingers to a fist in my hair and yanks. I jab the sword-edge and ram it, broadside, against him and close my eyes when he sighs, a harsh exhalation of pleasure.

Both of us are clad only in leathers.

We knew why we were coming here, and what we would find.

The dance begins, sparring with naked blades and teeth and fists. I feel the scratch of his beard on my face, hear the thud of my knuckles to his ribs. He pulls my hair until my head can go back no further and kicks my legs out from underneath me. When I hit the ground, he lands atop me, his own blade close to impaling his side.

I drop the sword, let it fall with a _hush_ into the snow.

“You _feinted_ ,” he says.

“I know.”

*

We lay there for a lifetime, limbs and stillness. I am crushed into the muddy snow, my hair now loose in a mess around my head.

Thassarian’s face is nested in the curve of my neck and my fingers are knotted in his shaggy white mane. His whiskers are rough on my skin. I feel a hot jab of pain as his teeth press to my neck, the scrape of cold lips at the point where, in life, a lover could undo me as easily as a well-plied blade.

“Thassarian,” I say into the gathering dark.

“You will never be rid of me, Koltira,” he speaks roughly against me.

“I shall count on it.” I dig my nails into his scalp and close my eyes.

He does not move away--just presses those chill lips to where my neck bleeds.

In life, a lover was something between pleasure and pain. A complicated, sharp-edged and cumbersome thing.

In death, it seems, it is exactly the same.

 


End file.
